It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)

Monday, July 09, 2007

THE BRITISH DISTRIBUTIONISTS

Those who are regular readers will know that I have a passing interest in Distributionism and its impact on Canadian reformist populist politics of the Right and Left.

THE BRITISH DISTRIBUTIONISTSreview byKevin A. CarsonRace Matthews. Jobs of Our Own: Building aStakeholderSociety--Alternatives to the Market & the State(Australia and UK, 1999).

Matthews starts with the nineteenth century origins ofdistributism: in the Catholic social teaching of Leo XIII's DeRerum Novarum (heavily influenced by the proto-distributistcardinal, Henry Manning, who in turn translated it intoEnglish and added his own commentary), and the widertradition of Christian socialism; and in what Matthews callsthe "communitarian and associative" strand of the greatersocialist movement.

The distributist vision of a social order based onwidespread, small-scale ownership of property, and ofan economy where the means of production weremainly owned by workers, dovetailed closely with theprinciple of "subsidiarity" in Catholic social teaching:that social functions should be carried out at thesmallest scale and the most local level of controlpossible.

Distributism clearly also had strong roots in the socialistrevival of the 1880s, but was alienated from an increasinglystatist and collectivist socialist movement. In the terminologyof Chesterton and Belloc, distributists saw themselves inopposition to both capitalism and socialism. But I get thesense, from reading Matthews, that their position was less arepudiation of socialism as such than a recognition that thestate socialists had permanently stolen the term forthemselves in the public mind.

Rather than a breach with socialism, it would perhaps bemore accurate to say they abandoned the term to theirenemies and adopted the name "distributism" for what"socialism" used to mean. One contributor to the DistributistWeekly, W.R. Titterton, commented that distributism wouldhave fit nicely with the kind of socialism that prevailed inEngland back when William Morris was alive (and, I suspect,would have fit in better yet with the earlier socialism ofProudhon and the Owenites). "It was a fine time that, andthe vision which possessed us might at last have capturedEngland, too. If we had not met Sidney Webb!"The Fabians, like other collectivists who have tried tomarginalize cooperativism within the socialist movement,dismissed distributism as a "petty bourgeois" or "preindustrial"movement relevant only to "artisan labor," andinapplicable to large-scale industrial organization. CecilChesterton, whose premature death dealt distributism aserious blow, treated such arguments with the contemptthey deserved. "If Mr Shaw means... that it cannot distributethe ownership of the works, it might be as well to inquire firstwhether the ownership is distributed already.... I mustconfess that I shall be surprised to learn that Armstrong'sworks are today the property of a single man namedArmstrong.... I do not see why it should be harder todistribute it among Armstrong's men than among a motleycrowd of country clergymen, retired Generals, Cabinetministers and maiden ladies such as provide the bulk of theshare-list in most industrial concerns."

Of the major intellectual figures of British distributism, Cecil was the mostaware of the central importance of producer organization.The distributist movement of G.K. Chesterton and HilaireBelloc, unfortunately, was long on theory and short onaction. It made little or no attempt at common cause, forexample, with the Rochedale cooperative movement.Although distributist intellectuals were strongly in favor ofcooperatives in principle, they seemed to have littleawareness that the wheel had already been invented!Despite impulses toward practical organization in theprovincial chapters of the Distributist League, and Fr.Vincent McNabb's support of agrarian colonies on vacantland, such efforts were inhibited by the leadership vacuumin London (whose main concern, apparently, was apparentlyintellectual debate, soapbox oratory, drinking songs, andpublic house bonhomie).

Antigonish

The first large-scale attempt to put distributism into practicewas the Antigonish movement of Frs. Jimmy Tompkins andMoses Coady, among the Acadian French population ofNova Scotia. Tompkins and Coady acted through adultstudy circles, strongly geared toward spurring practicalaction. One of the first outgrowths of their educational workwas a decision by lobstermen to build their own cooperativecanning factory. This quickly led to cooperative marketingventures, buying clubs for fishing supplies, and cooperativeoutlets for household woven goods. The movementcontinued to spread like wildfire throughout the Maritimes,with over two thousand study clubs by the late '30s withalmost 20,000 members, and 342 credit unions and 162other cooperatives. By keeping for themselves what formerlywent to middlemen, the working people of the Antagonishmovement achieved significant increases in their standard ofliving.

Through it all, Coady and Tompkins were motivated bythe "Big Picture" of a cooperative counter-economy on acomprehensive scale: cooperative retailers, buying fromcooperative wholesalers, supplied by cooperative factoriesowned by the movement, and financed by cooperativecredit.

In practice, though, the main emphasis was onconsumption and credit rather than production. Thefundamental weakness of Antigonish, Matthew argues, wasthat it relied mainly on consumer cooperation, on theRochedale model. Consumer cooperation, by itself, isvulnerable to what Matthews calls the "Rochedale cul-desac,"in which cooperatives have "gravitated from the handsof their members to those of bureaucracies," and adopted abusiness culture almost indistinguishable from that ofcapitalist firms. Worse yet, cooperatives are sometimessubject to hostile takeovers and demutualization.

The problem with the cooperative movement, idealized by Distributionists, Social Credit and even the CCF was it was limited as a producer's movement in opposition to existing capitalism. It was unable to produce a strong enough alternative economy and political force, whether from the right or left as the legacy of the UFA, Socreds and CCF show, to defeat existing capitalist relations.

When these producer based movements became political parties within a parliamentary system they literally sold their souls to the company store.In building a broad based alliance between farmers, workers, and urban professionals, these movements pushed for real parliamentary reform calling for direct democracy; referendum, recall.

In becoming a political party especially one in power, whether in Alberta or Saskatchewan, or indeed in some American states, the ability to reform the parliamentary system was limited, and in fact a straight jacket around the realpolitik of the movements.

Ultimately such movements during the last century in Europe and in North America ended up as consumer cooperatives, rather than independent artisan or producer alternatives to the banks and ultimately the capitalist system of production and distribution.

As such they became cogs in the existing capitalist system, as they are today. One really cannot tell the difference between the CO-OP stores and Safeways, or the Credit Unions and the big Banks.

Since once you transform producers to wage slaves they ultimately become 'consumers' in capitalist culture. As such they are subjects of history, rather than class conscious objects; makers of history.

The advent of transforming producers into wage slaves and ultimately declasse consumers, was the ultimate key to the survival of post Depression, post WWII capitalism.